Arizona mother speaks out after toddler found alive in morgue five hours after death pronouncement
Family was told breathing sounds were normal, boy survived but is severely brain-injured
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An Arizona mother has spoken publicly for the first time about the day a hospital pronounced her 18-month-old son dead — and medical examiners found him alive in the morgue five hours later. Vincent Lorenzo Fiordilino's drowning occurred at a backyard pool in Gilbert, a Phoenix suburb, on Feb. 8. First responders attempted life-saving measures before taking him to hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.
The record carried the warning signs from the start. According to police documents obtained by the Associated Press, Gilbert police officers and fire personnel at the scene saw possible signs of life. The child was nevertheless taken to the hospital's cold room after treatment. Gilbert police confirmed in July that medical staff had found the boy alive; his mother, Alexus Fiordilino, is now describing the hours around the pronouncement for the first time.
Fiordilino said she arrived at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center thinking, "OK, these people are going to help me." The emergency room doctor, Aryan Toosi, came to discuss "next steps," then returned "maybe not even five, 10 minutes later" to say the boy's pH levels were too high and too acidic, and that even if he were revived, "it wouldn't be a good form of life" — "He'd just be suffering." She hugged her son goodbye. Her mother-in-law, holding the child, said: "Hey, it sounds like he's breathing." The reply, as Fiordilino recalls it: "Oh, it's normal. It's normal that it's going to sound like that."
About five hours after the pronouncement, a team of medical examiners found the boy alive. He was taken to Phoenix Children's Hospital, treated and later released. His mother says he is "getting better." The family's lawyer, John Brewer, told NBC News that Vincent is severely brain-injured — he cannot swallow, he seizes up, he cannot sit up or crawl — and that he plans to file a formal complaint against Toosi and the hospital. "The parents were faced with having to decide whether to keep trying to revive their son, and the doctor provided them with false information," Brewer said. "That's beyond a conscious disregard for human life." A lawyer for Toosi said the doctor's thoughts are with the young patient and family.
"I had to say goodbye. Do you know how hard that is?" Fiordilino said. Her son spent five and a half hours alone in the cold room.